{
  "question_id": "CG-P1B-FULL-003",
  "slug": "what-a-regular-bookkeeping-checklist-should-cover",
  "display_title": "What should a small business's regular bookkeeping checklist cover — the recurring tasks that keep the books current — and is there a template?",
  "format": "article-v2",
  "applies_to": {
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  "general_concept": true,
  "summary": "Cover five recurring tasks: enter and categorize every transaction, compare the books with each bank and card statement, review what customers owe and what you owe, clear the queue of unresolved items, and confirm the other four ran. Give each a trigger or cadence, an input, a definition of done and a named owner; time payroll and sales-tax work back from their outside dates. The checklist below is a template to adapt to your business.",
  "body": "## Which recurring tasks keep the books current, and what does each one prevent?\n\nWhat each task prevents decides whether it can wait when time is short.\n\n| Task | Failure it prevents | Can it wait? |\n|---|---|---|\n| Enter and categorize transactions | Forgotten expenses, misclassified income, a growing backlog | No; every other task starts from it |\n| Compare the books with bank and card statements | Missing, duplicated or unauthorized transactions going unnoticed | No; only this task proves entry was complete for those accounts |\n| Review what customers owe and what you owe | Invoices ageing past collection; bills paid late, twice or to the wrong party | Receivables briefly; payables never past the next due date |\n| Clear the unresolved queue | Unknown items piling up beyond tracing | Only while the queue stays within its limits |\n| Confirm the routine ran | Skipped tasks staying invisible | No; it takes minutes |\n| Record payroll, if you have employees | Missing an obligation with an outside date | No; the date is set outside the business |\n| Record sales tax collected, if you collect it | Not knowing what you owe when the return is due | No; the date is set outside the business |\n\nThe IRS's page \"Why should I keep records?\" states the entry task's purpose: unless you record expenses when they occur, you may forget them when you prepare your tax return. It also says you need records of where income comes from to separate business from nonbusiness receipts and taxable from nontaxable income. That separation happens at categorization, so an entry left uncategorized is half done.\n\n## What does \"done\" mean for entering and categorizing transactions?\n\nThe input is everything that documents a transaction. The IRS's page \"What kind of records should I keep\" says supporting documents include sales slips, paid bills, invoices, receipts, deposit slips and canceled checks, and that these documents contain the information you need to record in your books. Add the transactions your software downloads and anything no feed shows, such as cash sales and business purchases on a personal card. Gathering receipts each week is a separate routine; this task starts from what that routine collects.\n\nDone partially, the task leaves three residues: downloaded transactions nobody reviewed, documents with no entry, and entries parked in a catch-all category. In QuickBooks Online, Intuit's help on categorizing online bank transactions says QuickBooks sends downloaded transactions to the Pending tab and suggests categories for each; accepting suggestions unread turns the first residue into the third.\n\nThe task is done only when all three of these hold:\n\n- The review queue is empty for every connected account.\n- Every document gathered since the last run has an entry or a match.\n- Anything in a catch-all or suspense category is on the unresolved list, with a note of what is missing.\n\nThe output is a queue count of zero and entries that each trace to a document.\n\n## What does the comparison with bank and card statements have to prove?\n\nIt is the one check that finds what was not entered in the accounts it compares, so never skip it because everything looks entered. Cash kept outside the bank and business purchases on a personal card are proven complete only by the entry task's document match. AccountingTools' entry on bank reconciliation says to reconcile all bank accounts at regular intervals: at a minimum shortly after the end of each month, when the statement arrives, and better still every day from the bank's month-to-date information. Intuit's help on reconciling an account in QuickBooks Online says regular checking helps find possible suspicious activity and avoid bookkeeping mistakes.\n\nThe input is the statement or month-to-date activity for every bank, credit card, loan and payment-processor account. Intuit's reconciling help describes the task as matching the transactions entered in QuickBooks with your bank and credit card statements, and finishing once the difference is $0.00. A zero forced by an unexplained adjustment is not done: name every reconciling item, such as a check not yet cleared, and send anything unexplained to the unresolved list.\n\nThe output is a saved record for each account and period; Intuit's reconciling help says that after you finish, QuickBooks saves a reconciliation report. What reconciliation is, and how its types differ, is a separate question.\n\n## What should the review of what is owed, both ways, surface?\n\n**Receivables.** The input is unpaid customer invoices by age. The review earns its time only if every overdue invoice leaves it with a next step and a date: a reminder, a call, or a hold on further work. OpenStax's Principles of Accounting, in its section on uncollectible accounts, says the longer a receivable goes unpaid, the lower the probability that it will be collected. Done means no overdue invoice lacks a next step, and every customer payment is applied to the invoice it pays.\n\n**Payables.** The input is unpaid bills and any supplier statements. The output is a list of bills due before the next review, each checked against what was ordered or received, with duplicates removed and disputes flagged. Done means each such bill is scheduled or disputed, and supplier statements agree with your unpaid bills.\n\n### What must be confirmed before any payment, bill or pay, goes to new or changed details?\n\nThe payables review and the payroll line decide what gets paid, so they are where a forged change of payment details is caught or missed. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, in its alert on business email compromise, advises using secondary channels or two-factor authentication to verify requests for changes in account information. Build these rules into both:\n\n- Before the first payment to any payee, whether supplier or employee, and before paying to changed details, confirm the destination by calling a number that did not reach you through the payee's email or messages: one the payee's organization publishes, one you looked up yourself, or one given to you in person. A number, meeting link or video call from that correspondence, earlier or later, does not count, because whoever controls the mailbox can answer or join it.\n- A request to change a payee's phone number or email address is itself a change of details, confirmed the same way before the new contact details are used.\n- Where staffing allows, someone other than the person who entered the details makes the confirmation, and whoever enters or changes payee details, including an outside bookkeeper's or payroll provider's staff, does not approve the payment. In a one-person business the owner does both, so the independent confirmation is the whole safeguard and is never skipped.\n- If no independent route exists, the payment waits: a new payee is not paid, and a changed payee is paid only to details confirmed before the change, or by check to an address confirmed before it, until the new details are confirmed in person or through a route you found yourself.\n- If a payment platform keeps the payee's bank details out of your view, you cannot see a redirect, so confirm through the same independent route that the platform account belongs to the payee before the first payment to it, including whenever you are asked to pay a different account on the platform.\n- Every payment goes through the payables review or the payroll line, not only large or unusual ones, and before money moves someone compares each payee's amount with that payee's approved bill or pay record, not only the batch total.\n- Everyone who can change payee details or approve payments signs in with a second factor, and the payee-change history that gets checked is the one the software records, reviewed by someone who does not edit payee details where staffing allows.\n\n## How large may the unresolved queue grow?\n\nAccountingTools' entry on suspense accounts describes one as a place to temporarily store transactions for which there is uncertainty about where they should be recorded. It says to review the items regularly, shifting them into their appropriate accounts as soon as possible; warns that otherwise they can grow and be very difficult to deal with months later; and says all suspense items should be researched and eliminated by the end of the fiscal year.\n\nWrite two limits of your own on the checklist line:\n\n- **Age.** An item may stay open for one run. At its second run it is either posted or escalated, with a date, to whoever can answer it. An escalated item still open when that date passes goes to the owner at the routine check.\n- **Size.** The queue never exceeds what one sitting can clear, a number you set from experience; once it passes that, the clearing task runs at once.\n\nThe input is the unresolved list, each item with its date, amount, what is known and who has been asked. The output is every item posted to its proper account or carried forward with a next action and date. Done means no item has reached its second run unposted and unescalated, no escalation is past its date, the queue is within its size limit, and your catch-all accounts' combined balance equals the net (debits minus credits) of the list items posted to them, with items posted nowhere counted separately. Resolving an individual item is a separate question.\n\n## How do you set each task's cadence?\n\nThree things can set a task's timing, and only the first is fixed.\n\n| What sets the timing | Tasks | How to set it |\n|---|---|---|\n| A date fixed from outside | Recording payroll; recording sales tax collected | Work back from the date, leaving time to check before it |\n| Your transaction volume | Entering and categorizing; clearing the unresolved queue | Often enough that one sitting clears everything since the last run, even in your busiest stretch |\n| Any point in the cycle | Statement comparison; both reviews of what is owed; routine check | A fixed day you will keep, with the comparison at least monthly and payables reviewed often enough that no bill falls due unseen |\n\nIf you have employees, payroll work is deadline-driven. The IRS's page \"Depositing and reporting employment taxes\" says there are two deposit schedules, monthly and semi-weekly, and that before the beginning of each calendar year you must determine which one you are required to use, by reviewing Publication 15, or Publication 51 if you file Form 943. Write yours on the checklist, along with every other payroll date you are subject to, such as federal unemployment (FUTA) tax deposits, which the same page puts on a separate quarterly rule, and set the payroll line back from the earliest. If you collect sales tax, find out how often each taxing authority requires a return; Washington's Department of Revenue, for one, says on its undated filing-frequency page that filing frequencies are assigned based on what you estimate for your yearly business income. Build the sales-tax line back from each filing date, then fit everything else around these fixed points.\n\nIf volume swings through the year, set volume-driven cadences against the busiest stretch, not the average, or the routine fails when transactions and errors are most numerous. For example, at about 100 transactions cleared per sitting, nine quiet months at 60 a week and three peak months at 180 average 90 a week, which one sitting clears, but the peak needs two. Move to the peak cadence as soon as a run finds more than one sitting's worth. When volume rises, the receivables review may drop from weekly to fortnightly; entry, queue clearing, the statement comparison, the payables review and anything built back from an outside date do not stretch.\n\n## Who owns each task, and what shows it was done?\n\nWho runs the routine changes the owners and the evidence.\n\n| Who runs the routine | Who owns what | Completion record |\n|---|---|---|\n| The owner does everything | The owner owns every line | A dated log entry per task, with its output attached |\n| A bookkeeper does it and the owner reviews | The bookkeeper owns entry, comparison and the queue; the owner signs off the reviews and approves payments | The bookkeeper's log, with the owner's initials on each reconciliation report and payables list |\n| An outside preparer does part | The business owns delivering documents and answers by an agreed day; the preparer owns the tasks it performs | One shared log both parties see, recording each handoff as well as each completion |\n\nWhenever more than one person touches the books, put a name, not a role or \"we\", against each line, and keep the completion record where the other party can see it. The checklist then doubles as a handoff record, and a line nobody signed shows up as nobody's.\n\n## What does an adoptable checklist look like?\n\nCopy this table, replace everything in square brackets, and delete lines that do not apply.\n\n| Task | Cadence or trigger | Input | Done when | Owner | Record |\n|---|---|---|---|---|---|\n| Enter and categorize | [Weekly; twice weekly at peak] | Documents since last run; review queue | Queue empty; every document entered or matched; leftovers on unresolved list | [Name] | Date; queue count |\n| Record payroll | Each pay run, set back from your earliest payroll date | Payroll register; bank-feed net-pay and tax debits | Gross pay, each withholding and the employer's Social Security and Medicare share agree with the register, withholdings and employer share recorded as liabilities; the run recorded once, its feed debits matched to it, not added, and any payroll-system posting checked, not re-entered; new or changed employee pay details independently confirmed before the run; each employee's net pay and destination agree with the approved pay record | [Name] | Date; pay period |\n| Record sales tax collected | Set back from each filing date | Sales by jurisdiction | Tax recorded agrees with sales records | [Name] | Date; period |\n| Compare with statements | [Weekly from month-to-date data]; at least monthly | Statement or month-to-date activity per account | Difference zero, ending balance and date as on the statement; every reconciling item named | [Name] | Saved report per account |\n| Review receivables | [Weekly; fortnightly at peak] | Unpaid invoices by age | Every overdue invoice has a next step and date; every customer payment since the last review applied to the invoice it pays | [Name] | Date; action list |\n| Review payables | [Weekly and before each payment run] | Unpaid bills; supplier statements | Bills due before next review checked against order or receipt, duplicates removed, and scheduled or disputed; supplier statements agree with unpaid bills; new or changed payee details independently confirmed | [Name] | Date; approved list |\n| Clear unresolved queue | [Weekly, or when past its size limit] | Unresolved list | Within age and size limits; no escalation past its date; combined catch-all balance equals the net of list items posted there | [Name] | Date; count; oldest item |\n| Routine check | End of each cycle | This log; software indicators | Every line dated or marked skipped with a reason; the four figures read, and each agrees with the log (queue zero where entry is logged done; last reconciliation covers the latest statement; oldest unresolved item within its age limit; no overdue invoice without a next step) | [Reviewer] | Date; initials; the four figures |\n\n## Is there a template, and how do you adapt one?\n\nYes: the table above is one. Any template is usable only if every line carries the task, its trigger or cadence, its input, its definition of done and its owner; a list of task names can be ticked in good faith while the work sits unfinished. Adapt one in this order:\n\n1. Delete every line for something you do not do, such as inventory counts in a service business, so nobody learns to skip lines.\n2. Add lines for what you do that it lacks, such as each bank, card and payment-processor account, payroll or sales tax.\n3. Replace each cadence with one set from your busiest stretch and your outside dates, keeping the statement comparison at least monthly.\n4. Tie each \"done when\" to something your software shows, keeping the condition behind it: an empty review queue with every item reviewed, not accepted unread, and a reconciliation difference of zero with the ending balance and date as the statement shows and every reconciling item named.\n5. Put a name on every line.\n6. Move anything that belongs to the period close off the list.\n7. Note what you changed and why, so the next revision starts from reasons.\n\n## Where does this routine stop and the close begin?\n\nAccountingTools' entry on the accounting cycle separates the steps taken for each transaction, ending with recording in the appropriate accounts the amounts noted on the business document, from the period-end steps. Those include preparing a preliminary trial balance, adjusting entries that add accrued items, record estimates and correct errors, preparing financial statements from the adjusted trial balance, and closing the books for the reporting period. This routine is the first group plus the checks that keep it complete; the second group is the close, which has its own month-end and year-end checklists. Post corrections the comparison and the queue turn up when you find them; any still open at period end become the close's adjusting entries, among which the accounting-cycle entry lists month-end bank reconciliation errors and transactions recorded in the wrong account. A current routine speeds the close but closes nothing, because it produces no accruals, estimates or statements.\n\n## How does a skipped task show up instead of hiding?\n\nA routine decays silently when a missed line looks like a finished one. Three rules make gaps visible:\n\n- **No blank lines.** Every line, every cycle, carries a date and initials, or the word \"skipped\" and a reason; a blank counts as a failure.\n- **Evidence, not ticks.** Each completion points to its output, such as the queue count, the saved reconciliation report or the dated action list.\n- **Checks against the software.** The routine check compares the log with what the platform itself shows, which changes whether or not anyone logs anything.\n\nIn QuickBooks Online, the Pending tab that Intuit's categorizing help describes is the entry signal: anything still there means entry is unfinished, and the reconciliation reports QuickBooks saves show which comparisons were completed. Zoho's undated help page says that, after bank statements are imported, each bank account's Dashboard tab in Zoho Books shows the date of the last manual import and of the last reconciliation. At each routine check, read four figures: items in the review queue, the last reconciliation date against the latest statement, the age of the oldest unresolved item, and the oldest overdue invoice without a next step.\n\nWhen a line is skipped or fails repeatedly, treat it as a design fault and change its cadence, its owner, its definition of done, or the arrangement it depends on, such as a card account never connected to the feed.",
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